Hargreaves Lansdown approached us to collaborate on devising a campaign of animated videos that would engage current and potential clients, explaining the basics of investing and other financial topics. HL could see the benefit of utilising video in effective financial marketing, realising that video does the ‘heavy lifting’ of explaining topics to customers, saving time and the cost of calls at the customer help desk.

Keen to broaden their audience, the execution of the videos needed to be jargon-free, clear and concise. The design elements would need to be ‘campaignable’, allowing many different characters and elements to be produced for future financial topics.

Overall the videos needed to be brand-building, entertaining and pitched at the correct level of complexity.

Fable Studios’ animation team conceived a wide range of design styles and, during a series of interactive development meetings with HL, final character and environment approaches were decided upon.

‘Andy’ was created along with his friends and family. Approachable, colourful and immediately identifiable, Andy conveyed the correct level of light-hearted education whilst not patronizing the audience. To further reinforce this, great care was taken in how the characters moved and interacted so as to not appear childish or flippant.

The scripts were developed in conjunction with key stakeholders at HL with Fable Studios bringing expertise in translating complex financial information into understandable messaging. Particular care was taken to source the correct voice-over artist to present the HL tone of voice.

Further style frames and storyboards followed, honed during regular development meetings, with the final format fully realised prior to animation production. We ensured that the HL brand pallette was carried throughout the animations and incorporated the unique and instantly identifiable HL ‘flare’ as a transition device between scenes.

The key outputs were delivered, optimised for their destination platforms, and the character and other design assets streamlined ready for further use.

The ‘Andy’ animations have become a mainstay of the HL content offering and an ever-expanding suite of videos has been produced covering a wide range of financial topics.

As of 2024, the Andy explainer animation series has a total of 398,000 views on YouTube.

HL continues a productive partnership with Fable Studios ensuring their video and animation content is effective and engaging.